Sunday, May 1, 2011

It's that time again...the first of the month calls for a brief recap of the previous month's goals and an overview of what is coming up this month!

Near the end of the month we started some armwarmers that had been on our queue for awhile for lack of having the proper sized needles to start. Lo and behold we got them done and whipped them up in a few days. It was definitely a learning experience as most of our knitting in the round has been composed of hats with bulky yarn. Working the smaller needles (size 7 versus a size 13) was interesting. Then to our surprise (and thanks to Facebook) we sold those armwarmers before they were even finished! (And we had been doubting the possibility of that due to the hideously bright color they were...)

We also had something to say on our thoughts about being green as an artist/business.

Our Artfire posting goals have waxed and waned, some days we've met the quota others we haven't. But with about half of our stock listed we can't complain really. Stocking that store has also allowed up to revamp some of our descriptions of things and save them (we lost them all from previous listings) and we've placed them on our store's official site (which you can also order off of).

As for our queue....In an effort to better organize and use our time wisely (as the business owner also runs another separate business with it's own store among other things) we've been following some advice from Flylady about working from home. We revamped our project list which at this point is upwards of 70 projects (with a few marked off...):

However, with each one we mark off it seems another 5 or 10 jump right on (that's okay though, we like to keep busy!) But what's currently underway and what you can look to for updates on our Facebook page and in our photo albums are these:

Nicole L's Scarf

Nicole L's Hat

Hellenic Reconstructionist Altar Cloth

Yea we know it doesn't look like much, but we also only have 7 hours to do any work a day (and only 4 of those are allotted to this business) and generally our project work is 1 hr/day/project (otherwise we'd overdo it!) There are also a number of other projects - which we won't mention here - that are done not for profit or in trade for something else - you can note those on our blog that explores the scenes behind the art with the artist.

Perhaps most importantly that happened in April was the new institution of a work/personal calendar for the artist. While we are the industrious type we tend to get bogged down by a lot of projects, eg distracted, and sometimes will only work "willy nilly" on things. While this isn't atypical of artists, it's annoying to get virtually nothing done and really a pain in the butt with the level of productivity we'd like to accomplish (we're literally doing something from 6 am to midnight 7 days a week!) So far the schedule, while it looks ridiculously monstrous and daunting, is doing a good job of keeping us on task. We can't say for sure or not if it's making the artist's insomnia worse but there is definitely more structure in our day!

So what's in store for May??? Working on a few projects, keeping up with our new schedule, and many orders we hope! We're glad you stopped by to see what we were up to and look forward to making your acquaintance!

And as a special gift to all who actually read our blog, we have a major holiday this month, we're offering a 15% off coupon on your entire order if you place it in May! Use coupon code - B3LTAN3 - in your message to the store when you place your order!